Comcast data caps hit test cities, range from 300GB to 600GB

When Comcast decided to suspend its 250GB per month caps on Internet service, the reprieve for customers was only temporary. New caps of 300GB to 600GB would hit two test markets by the end of the year, Comcast said, with the caps presumably affecting customers nationwide at some later, not-yet-announced date.

Comcast has now revealed some details on how those caps are being implemented as they hit test cities. The caps began in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 1, and go into place in Tucson, Arizona, on October 1. In Tucson, customers are getting at least 300GB, as promised, and can get up to 600GB if they pay for the Extreme 105 service, which offers 105Mbps download speed:

Those who go over their caps will automatically be billed $10 for another block of 50GB. Customers can view their usage online, and when they exceed their caps they will get an e-mail and an in-browser notification like this one:

In Nashville, the cap is 300GB no matter what tier of service you subscribe to. The difference between Nashville and Tucson makes sense given that Comcast said in May that it will pilot “at least two approaches in different markets.”

The automatic $10 charge for each additional block of 50GB applies to both Nashville and Tucson. Comcast customers in both test markets also get three “courtesy passes,” meaning that customers won’t be billed the first three times they exceed their monthly allotment in a 12-month period.

Comcast is not saying whether these details will remain the same when caps are implemented beyond Nashville and Tucson. “We need to run these trials for a few months so we can assess the customer experience and our network,” a Comcast spokesperson told Ars, adding that “we don’t have any additional plans to announce at this time.” An article in Broadband Reports citing a "reliable source" claims that Comcast's national rollout will adopt tiered caps, but this has not been confirmed.

How high can the caps go? Comcast is planning 305Mbps service in some markets, but not in Tucson or Nashville. If Comcast continues with the Tucson approach of giving progressively bigger caps to customers who pay for higher speeds, those who opt for 305Mbps could end up getting more than 600GB per month.

Even the previous 250GB cap affected less than 1 percent of customers, and median monthly usage is only 10 to 12GB per month, according to Comcast. But, people and families with multiple devices who download and stream lots of video could find themselves hitting Comcast’s limits.

Of course, Comcast makes exceptions. If you’re using Comcast’s Xfinity TV On Demand on an Xbox 360, for example, that traffic does not count against your usage cap. Criticism that Comcast is prioritizing its own services over those of video streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu has led to a Department of Justice investigation into possible antitrust violations.

Is there really still that much congestion on the coax networks? With the loss of the Starz catalog to Netflix, I'd expect a decrease in the amount of Netflix movies watched per month, and that was a huge driver for the congestion in the first place (during evening hours, when everyone is home after school & work).

I'm probably nowhere near these cap numbers on FIOS (where I don't have a cap), but I refuse to go to Comcast in principle as long as there are no-cap alternatives that don't suck. But Frontier seems to hate their FIOS customers one day and love them the next.

$10/50Gb does not seem particularly outrageous, for US internet pricing (which is high).

I think the warning should go out at 90% or 95% of cap instead of waiting until you've already been charged.

They should also put your usage on your monthly bill, regardless of whether you hit the limit. That's important when deciding which plan to buy. In my opinion they should be required to provide that information if it has any potential to affect billing whatsoever (which it obviously does if there are caps and overage fees).

I still hate the idea of caps, because really what Comcast is trying to do is stop people from cutting off TV service, but I have to admit that this is more reasonable than "Go over the cap (250GB) twice and your service is turned off" that it used to be.

With netflix and other streaming services, it's all too easy to blow through your bandwidth cap through entirely legal means. During one month of a previous period of unemployment, I went through 600gb in 2 weeks on netflix alone. Suppose if I'm consuming that much TV without going through the cable company they've got reason to be scared.

Doesn't sit right with me that they're exempting their own traffic, glad that it's being investigated.

Is there really still that much congestion on the coax networks? With the loss of the Starz catalog to Netflix, I'd expect a decrease in the amount of Netflix movies watched per month, and that was a huge driver for the congestion in the first place (during evening hours, when everyone is home after school & work).

Netflix accounts for something like 20% of the entire traffic of the internet.

At some point they'll (who 'They' are I am not sure) have to realize that internet is a service just like electricity or gas and just provide it and charge a monthly fee based upon use - I'd rather have a monthly fee based upon bandwidth package, but it isn't greedy enough to be sustainable.

So how do you block network traffic that they would count towards your cap? A firewall or router in your home will only block traffic after it has gone over the Comcast cable modem. I would assume this traffic would be counted towards your monthly cap.

What is stopping someone from flooding your home network from out on the internet and running up the data usage charges? At $10/50GB, I could see a slow steady stream costing hundreds of dollars per month.

Like, over your local network? If so, that doesn't count. We're talking about uploading and downloading data from the Internet.

No, between my systems at home and my systems in data centers across the internet.

You sell me a 70/20 connection, I'll probably make some use of it. I typically sustain 10Mbit outbound with nightly derestriction to use the full bandwidth, and can pull 30-50Mbit down sustained for long periods when gathering data from remote systems. All legal, by the way - it's my data.

50GB for $10 is a pretty big mark up. I know that some portion of your cable bill goes to maintaining the last mile, but the implication with the bandwidth charges is that there is some cost for data that Comcast has to pay. And in fact there is, but the bulk price of bandwidth these days is well under $5.00 / Mbps. It's confusing that the consumer ISP's like to charge by amount of data rather than the average data rate over the month, but roughly speaking 1Mbps sustained will transfer 300GB in a month. With Comcast that would mean they would charge you 6x$10 = $60 for bandwidth usage that they might pay $2.50 for from their upstream. Never mind that a lot of that traffic is coming from CDN's which will happily peer with Comcast or install equipment to minimize that cost.

I wonder how much data is involved in streaming one hour of Hulu or Netflix or whatever? I agree with others that the caps are much more about trying to keep down the streaming competitors to Comcasts core video business than anything else.

The cost is not unreasonable, but once charging becomes accepted, the rates will undoubtedly go up.

What I dislike the most about this, it the "in-browser" notification. That means Comcast is modifying web pages (HTTP replies). They probably also intercept 404 errors to show you advertising; this makes it difficult to validate links if you never get an error.

By the time Comcast customers complain sufficiently about the data cap rates, it will probably be too late to stop it.

your typical game is only a few gigs (borderlands2 is like 5 gigs). Still, the idea is pretty nasty.

I don't know, I've got games on Steam that are somewhere like 3-4 times that. I bought it and haven't actually downloaded / installed it yet, but Max Payne 3 is supposedly like 30GB.

Not supposedly - it is.

That's one game. Things get worse if you decide to do a fresh Windows install (or just upgrade, say from Win 7 to Win 8) and want to install several games. Most games run about 7-9GB but can go higher, up to 15GB, not including DLC. Then you have drivers, Windows updates, and any add-ons you want.

Of course, that also neglects that some folks like to buy digital version of movies at 720 - 1080p as well as television shows. Even 600GB is paltry for some users, and 300-350GB is weak sauce.

With netflix and other streaming services, it's all too easy to blow through your bandwidth cap through entirely legal means. During one month of a previous period of unemployment, I went through 600gb in 2 weeks on netflix alone.

I have an honest question here. I rate 1 hour of HD video around 1 GB but I could be wrong. Is that right? I could be wrong because I'm using a single iTunes video download as my yardstick. If I'm right, that's 300 hours of video, which doesn't seem right. Or does Netflix have better quality than iTunes and movies are streamed with less compression?

This 300 GB number fails to help the average consumer understand how many videos, games or otherwise that really means.

Is there really still that much congestion on the coax networks? With the loss of the Starz catalog to Netflix, I'd expect a decrease in the amount of Netflix movies watched per month, and that was a huge driver for the congestion in the first place (during evening hours, when everyone is home after school & work).

Netflix accounts for something like 20% of the entire traffic of the internet.

And Starz wasn't that much of a loss. It's signal/noise ratio is pretty awful. Also, Netflix seems to be getting more "Recently Added" things more often as of the last 6 months, some of it awful as always, but some of it not.

This is why the government needs to break up ISPs. ISPs should be allowed to sell you a pipe but no services over that pipe. All other parts of their business should be split into a separate company.

The reason for this is that ISPs benefit from concessions granted to them, allowing them to build infrastructure. That infrastructure provides a massive barrier to entry such that even if they don't meet customer needs, they don't have to worry about competition. This market position can and is easily abused.

One such abuse is the fact that Comcast streaming traffic doesn't count toward the data cap. As ISPs start offering more and more services, there is nothing to prevent them from abusing their market position and making it such that competing services don't have access to customers.

10$ for 50GB = $.20/GB. I would gladly switch to a la carte internet at that price. Especially if they gave you a top speed connection. They could even add a $20/month line fee, and it'd still be reasonable.

With netflix and other streaming services, it's all too easy to blow through your bandwidth cap through entirely legal means. During one month of a previous period of unemployment, I went through 600gb in 2 weeks on netflix alone.

I have an honest question here. I rate 1 hour of HD video around 1 GB but I could be wrong. Is that right? I could be wrong because I'm using a single iTunes video download as my yardstick. If I'm right, that's 300 hours of video, which doesn't seem right. Or does Netflix have better quality than iTunes and movies are streamed with less compression?

This 300 GB number fails to help the average consumer understand how many videos, games or otherwise that really means.

If you are interested in setting a limit on how much data our service will use, you can adjust your video quality setting. Navigate to Netflix.com/VideoQuality to manage the amount of data you use when playing movies and TV shows on Netflix.

There are 3 settings to choose from:

Good quality (uses up to 0.3 GB per hour) Better quality (uses up to 0.7 GB per hour) Best quality (uses up to 1 GB per hour, or up to 2.3 GB per hour if watching HD)

Different regions have different default settings:

The default setting in the US is “Best”. The default setting in Canada is “Good”. The default setting in Latin America is “Best,” except in Brazil where it is “Good”. The default setting across the UK and Ireland is “Best”.

$10/50Gb does not seem particularly outrageous, for US internet pricing (which is high).

I think the warning should go out at 90% or 95% of cap instead of waiting until you've already been charged.

They should also put your usage on your monthly bill, regardless of whether you hit the limit. That's important when deciding which plan to buy. In my opinion they should be required to provide that information if it has any potential to affect billing whatsoever (which it obviously does if there are caps and overage fees).

This would entail the practice of being honest and fair with your customers, something business's have a hard time doing. Don't look to the govt. "requiring" them to do anything. Well other than buying them off that is.

To put some perspective on these numbers. I live in Canada, and I have the largest bandwidth allotment on my ISP (175GB / month, unused bandwidth doesn't roll over and overage is $1/GB). I use my internet very extensively, I don't have cable TV so all of my TV / movies are done through Netflix (1080p HD stream through my PS3) and torrents. I do not usually go over the bandwidth amount each month, although i live alone I think I have a very high usage rate compared to the average user/family.

Now, that being said, I don't agree with bandwidth allotments and I hate the fact that my ISP does it (I have no choice but to use them), but I can't see the average user/family going over 300GB, let alone 600.

EDIT: Changed from 130GB to 175GB and 50c to $1 (my ISP has since increased the allotment on my package without me knowing)

People need to keep in mind that "back bone" internet data is absurdly cheap. It's pennies per gig of transfer because the scale is so massive. What is problematic is last mile transit. So it's a bit of a slap in the face that the XBox Hulu gets free transit when it's just as much a problem as anything else.

At some point they'll (who 'They' are I am not sure) have to realize that internet is a service just like electricity or gas and just provide it and charge a monthly fee based upon use - I'd rather have a monthly fee based upon bandwidth package, but it isn't greedy enough to be sustainable.

The issue with usage-based billing for internet is that the bits you receive from your connection don't really cost anything to make and don't use up finite resources, the way that having water or electricity brought to your house does. You aren't costing your ISP any more money from downloading 100 GB than you do from downloading 10 GB, so why should you have to pay more for the former?

With netflix and other streaming services, it's all too easy to blow through your bandwidth cap through entirely legal means. During one month of a previous period of unemployment, I went through 600gb in 2 weeks on netflix alone. Suppose if I'm consuming that much TV without going through the cable company they've got reason to be scared.

Doesn't sit right with me that they're exempting their own traffic, glad that it's being investigated.

In New Zealand they did that (exempt their own traffic). And if you reached your cap, bam, you're at dial-up speeds. It was the worst thing ever, because most browsers seem to give up trying to load pages at those speeds. It was more like having no internet than slow internet. So I guess this isn't so bad...

Now I'm back in the US, and even though I live in a major suburban city in the SF Bay Area I only have one ISP choice (Comcast, because I'm just out of range of AT&T's nearest station or something). If I had more options I'd be okay with them exempting their own traffic. But with just one option, it's a bit more concerning.

your typical game is only a few gigs (borderlands2 is like 5 gigs). Still, the idea is pretty nasty.

I don't know, I've got games on Steam that are somewhere like 3-4 times that. I bought it and haven't actually downloaded / installed it yet, but Max Payne 3 is supposedly like 30GB.

Not supposedly - it is.

[img snip]http://i.minus.com/iSaGyS6mxEEeV.jpg[/img]

That's one game. Things get worse if you decide to do a fresh Windows install (or just upgrade, say from Win 7 to Win 8) and want to install several games. Most games run about 7-9GB but can go higher, up to 15GB, not including DLC. Then you have drivers, Windows updates, and any add-ons you want.

Of course, that also neglects that some folks like to buy digital version of movies at 720 - 1080p as well as television shows. Even 600GB is paltry for some users, and 300-350GB is weak sauce.

Don't forget, some households have more than one computer. I, myself, have 2 MacBooks and a gaming desktop. I'm not going to try to figure out how to install one set of updates to a flash drive so I can spread that update to my other computers. It's much easier just to click "Update" and let it download/install them. I do my part in downloading big updates late at night to avoid congesting the network here, but yeah 300-350GB is nothing. If you have a weak connection (e.g. 5mbps), then yes I say 400GB is good enough, I guess. But if you have a top tier connection (e.g. like the 50 or 100mbps package), it should either be unlimited or capped in the terabytes. 450-600GB is very weak when someone is paying in the hundreds for that connection.

Last I looked (a few days ago) my router said ~450gb in the past month. 350GB may not be enough it seems.

If your router says 450gb, then 350GB is way more than you need.

Lower case b signifies bits.

Upper case B signifies bytes (or 8 bits).

Semantics. 450GB.

No, that isn't semantics any more than saying 1 inch is the same as a foot. I understood it as bits as well.

Mordion wrote:

10$ for 50GB = $.20/GB. I would gladly switch to a la carte internet at that price. Especially if they gave you a top speed connection. They could even add a $20/month line fee, and it'd still be reasonable.

Absolutely. That is an acceptable price as far as I am concerned. On verizon (wireless) we get 10GB per month, and I think it was $10 per 2GB after that. But Comcast isn't an option here.

"Of course, Comcast makes exceptions. If you’re using Comcast’s Xfinity TV On Demand on an Xbox 360, for example, that traffic does not count against your usage cap. Criticism that Comcast is prioritizing its own services over those of video streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu has led to a Department of Justice investigation into possible antitrust violations."

This could only be fair and legal if their own streaming services were subject to the same cap. I could see for example that ~$30/month for 600GB could be considered fair (but distasteful) on its own merit. Then if the subscriber had Xfinity TV on Demand (for another ~$30/month); that service could provide pro-rated an additional 600GB and then capped and sold at their higher rate that they specified for their "Data Only" service.